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Certified BitTorrent Box Brings uTorrent to Your TV

The first ever certified BitTorrent Android box goes on sale today, allowing users to stream files downloaded with uTorrent wirelessly to their television. The new set-top box supports playback of all popular video formats and can also download torrents by itself, fully anonymously if needed.

bbkWith a quarter billion active users a month BitTorrent is without a doubt the most used file-sharing platform.

The vast majority of these BitTorrent users download video files, but despite these staggering statistics it can still be quite cumbersome to play downloaded files on the old-fashioned TV.

The first ever certified Android-powered BitTorrent box aims to change this. After the initial December launch was delayed, the BBK BitTorrent box officially goes up for sale today.

While we have seen devices that support BitTorrent downloads before, this is the first one that can can also stream content downloaded through uTorrent and BitTorrent clients on the local network.

This means that users can play content downloaded by uTorrent and BitTorrent directly on their TV. Below is a screenshot of the user interface, displaying the various BitTorrent clients the device can connect to wirelessly.

Since the device supports DLNA, users can also access other media libraries including the one from rival BitTorrent client Vuze and Apple’s iTunes.


bbkutorrent

In addition to playing content downloaded by other clients, the BitTorrent box itself also comes with BitTorrent support. Users are able to add torrent files through the built-in web browser or load torrent files from a USB drive.

The BitTorrent box then takes care of the downloading and the file can be played instantly when the download is finished.


bbk-add

Another upside of the BitTorrent box is that it’s running on Android, giving users access to thousands of applications in the Android market. This includes various VPN applications for those who value their privacy.

The BBK BitTorrent box is up for sale now at just under 90 euros and ships to European countries only.

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  • Guest

    piracy for the lazy kind 8)

    • Earth Star

      No, it’s piracy the whole family can use and enjoy now!

      • PLS

        I wonder if it supports 10bit X264, hmm…

    • Guest

      uTorrent sucks.

      Expect no privacy.

      • Alex

        Way to read the article you idiot.

    • Mouseanony

      Not until ISPs stop being greedy whores. I don’t see this working with my seedbox.

      • guest

        Why not? I mean it runs on android, there’s probably a million different ways to make it work with your seedbox using freely available software. I just think you’re not creative enough. Just off the top of my head I thought of these ideas:

        1. Write a script to work with deluge’s execute plugin that will ftp a file directly to a ftp server running on the box as soon as it completes.
        2. Android FTP client. Duh. Most obvious.
        3. HTTP streaming. Not sure if the media player they include supports this but many do, including the one built into android, I personally use vplayer which has support for many different formats.

        • guest

          And one more scenario I forgot to mention, you could install openvpn on your seedbox to get around the restrictions of your “greedy whore” ISP. It’s easy, anyone can do it, check out openvpn-as if you’re too much of a noob to set it up the old fashioned way

        • http://www.facebook.com/enigma69 John Wentworth

          If you know enough to do all of that work, you’ll probably better off with a server , running bittorrent, rsync and a mediaserver that can support any format you throw at it (transcoding support is key) Not a limited hardware device, I have a media server, and I’ve used many different hardware media players, no hardware box supports everything. Although my Popcorn hour C-200 comes pretty close.

        • Mouseanony

          And I could do that exact same thing with a 50$ android TV box… why pay for this BS?

          Not creative enough? But you offer simple dumb solutions like FTP. And you obviously do not know how VPN works, do you? Traffic, even though compressed and encrypted, still counts at the ISP level. I have no idea why you would even suggest that, but based on your other suggestions it implies you’re the noob. Extreme noob.

          Thanks for your useless insight.

    • Scary_Devil_Monastery

      Meh. You mean “one more console I’d have to update for no more functionality than my PC will offer”.

      It’s a crying shame that offering to put yet one more black box with limited functionality in the living room may give piracy a solid boost in popularity.

      For the design reason. Naturally.

  • Guest321

    Oh man you gotta love Android. Its everywhere now. My internet isn’t fast enough for streaming but I am sure lots of people around the world who would be all too happy to buy this nifty little box.

    • Guest

      Not me. They have no trading address. Just an email contact.
      Good luck if your order gets lost.
      A cheap media player at a third the cost will do me fine.

      • Mouseanony

        Sure does look like a scam promoted by TF.

        No physical contact info. Support link is an email address. They don’t give out CPU/etc specs, etc.

        The specs they DO give out are horrible. 55MB for apps? Are you kidding me? I’ll just buy any random 50$ android TV box, install a torrent app that’s better than utorrent and that I don’t have to worry about privacy, and use android to its full potential.

        Who remembers their 486 with 100MB HDD that they had to install 1 game to play another? Yeah… back to 1980′s. Great innovation.

        The domain is registered to the address of “Bruzon L P & Co Accountants” in Gibraltar, but with a person that has nothing to do with it. He does however seem to own a hair loss surgery forum…

        Smells like an epic scam.

    • Anyone

      and all for free and without patents

      just more proof that the copyright system is no longer needed

      • Guest

        The objection to it will the absolute opposite of what said. Lol

      • SoundnuoS

        You mean they aren’t charging for the box? Great! A new business model!

        • Anyone

          of course they are charging for the hardware
          but the software is free

          just like you pay if you buy a DVD but can download a copy of the movie for free

        • Scary_Devil_Monastery

          Given the specs of the hardware implied…the “box” might be the one thing they should charge for. And freight and handling.

          My smart phone can handle those operations.

      • Scary_Devil_Monastery

        We had that with the PC.

        In this case I suspect the box consists of hardware left over from an android tablet manufacturing plant in China, hobbled together in a nice new casing printed for a few dimes in burma, and loaded with a run-of-the-mill debian distro.

        And then sold at 900% profit.

  • http://tiny.cc/Justp94 Justin T. Poindexter

    This is going to get shutdown real quick, it basically screams “I’m going to Pirate DVDs and Blurays and watch it on my 50 inch HDTV”…And I’m not even against piracy, but it’s ideas like these that are making BitTorrent more guilty.

    • black_obelisk

      Last I checked, piracy is illegal. I don’t see computers being outlawed, though..

      • guess who

        i bet the somalian pirates, if they could read and had internet acces, would laugh at us being called pirates. they’re the real deal.

        • Earth Star

          Get real! Billy the kid was the REAL deal. Somalian pirates are just a bunch of pedophile crack-heads with boats.

        • Guest

          Earth Star,
          who is ‘Billy the kid’?

        • Djxxddee

          I bet Jack Sparrow’s laughing even harder he’s the real deal.

        • 50cal

          Even without access to the internet I bet those Somali pirates would spell access correctly!

      • Karak R. Jack

        “Last I checked, piracy is illegal.”

        You’re reinforcing a lie. The copyright maximalists would love for everyone to automatically believe file sharing of any kind is illegal no matter where you are in the world, full stop.

        The truth is that it depends on the country you live in as laws can differ greatly from place to place. It depends on whether it’s for personal use or not. It depends on whether it’s a large scale commercial operation or not. It depends on the use the copy will be for. It depends on all kinds of mitigating factors because most sane governments understand, or at least used to clearly understand at one time, the importance of concepts like fair use and public domain.

        Because of all that and more, broadly stating that file sharing is perfectly legal is about as accurate and you saying it’s illegal. So please, stop doing the MAFIAA’s work for them by spread lies. Ok?

        • Guest

          …. Piracy is not a blanket term for file sharing…

          pi·ra·cy [pahy-ruh-see] Show IPA
          noun, plural pi·ra·cies.
          1.
          practice of a pirate; robbery or illegal violence at sea.
          2.
          the unauthorized reproduction or use of a copyrighted book, recording, television program, patented invention, trademarked product, etc.: The record industry is beset with piracy.

        • brudda

          Thank you! I couldn’t have said it better myself.
          I love what TPB stands for, but I think they did a huge injustice to the file-sharing community by using the word “Pirate” in the their name.
          And how about the name of the Pirate Party? Why didn’t they just call themselves the Charles Manson Hitler Party? It probably would’ve been better for the rest of us…

        • http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole

          @brudda

          you’re retarded.

          Get some education of the history of internet piracy, they were calling us pirates, we just took the name back. Easier to absorb the barb, it doesn’t hurt then. It’s similar (though not comparable in depth) to the way the blacks took back the name “nigger”. And there’s nothing wrong with it.

        • Pling

          @Gene Poole
          Good, I’m going to call you “fool”, now you just absorb it.

        • Wallace

          I think what you mean is, who has the right to authorize reproduction or use?

          Do I need Toyota to authorize me lending my car to someone? Even if that sharing keeps them from buying their own Toyota? No.

          Even more to the point, *real* content creators – the people who are hurt by copyright infringement – consider this definition and discussion irrelevant. They don’t give a rat’s ass about an imagined or proposed right to authorize someone’s else’s use. They just don’t want people profiting off their work in a manner that financially hurts them. The definition below (a real thing) makes the word “piracy” practically useless, which is why you don’t see it much except on the Trichordist and here.

      • http://tiny.cc/Justp94 Justin T. Poindexter

        It’s just going to piss off the Movie Industry more, and they’ll use something like “Why create a device that clearly promotes piracy of movies and television series more easily?”

        • http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole

          God forbid we should worry about offending the precious Movie Industry. They’ll spin it no matter what happens. Should technology never develop then, because the Movie Industry might take exception? Maybe we should stop looking into mesh networking because the phone companies might get offended.

        • xpmule

          maybe they should have thought about doing it first ?
          their busy suing people i think..

        • Scary_Devil_Monastery

          Again; You mean like the PC or the Xbox?

          The MPAAand RIAA have called absolutely every electronic device capable of recording a “pirate tool”. From the computer to the iPod. They’ll call this one so as well. And?

      • brudda

        Please define “piracy”.

        Last I checked, downloading was legal and uploading was illegal.

        • Free As The Wind

          Last I checked any of those activities are not illegal in my country.
          Have a nice life over there.

    • Sabel44

      What exactly is your point?

    • ThumbsUpThumbsDown

      Actually, what it screams is that the Copyright Laws need to be changed radically.

      • Hogspace

        Right on the fucking nail!

      • Who

        according to the PDF of the US copyright act they already have been changed it since 2011. but ya they need to reform them again so they don’t contradict property rights.

        • ThumbsUpThumbsDown

          Wrong!

          They need to reform Copyright Law, not so that it doesn’t contradict some selfserving plutocratic corporate encapsulation of “Mine! Mine! Mine! Forever Mine!”; but, so that it doesn’t render eternal a Perpetual Corporate Domain in Human Intellectual Property!

          Why?

          Because a Perpetual Corporate Domain in Intellectual Property is a moral abomination that deserves to be rendered as redundant and irrelevant as Hitlers Ovens and Yankee Slave Ships.

          The Public Domain!! Human Ideas for Human Beings!!

          That’s what the abolition or revision of Copyright Law should reestablish!!

      • Asashii

        then you will have to make everything yourself because who wants to spend all that time making $hite for no reason, do you have a job and i guess you work for free!

        • DouglasAdams

          Why? What makes you think nobody will produce anything if copyright is radically altered (to reflect its original intent) or abolished? Do you think that nobody makes their own videos and posts them on YouTube? Do you think bands will not form and write music the way they always have regardless of getting paid? The idea that copyright gives people the incentive to create is a complete myth. Personal human abstract thinking is the incentive to create and copyright is merely a vehicle to restrict distribution through an artificial monopoly (originally for a limited period, but now for lifetime AND some) which in theory should help the creator monetise their creation for a set amount of time before anybody is allowed to redistribute the creation as they so wish. Even removing the artificial monopoly completely won’t stop people’s creative abstract thinking and the urge it creates within them to make or do something.

        • ThumbsUpThumbsDown

          With what confidence can you possibly recommend your presumption that the only Cinema or Music or Art worth making or distributing HAS TO BE manufactured and dustributed within the high Cost/high price controlled channels of the Copyright Cartels.

          Arn’t the vast majority of the hjigh cost/high pricepoint products we are offered multiply repackaged and rebranded garbage; and, isn’t the very best Artistic Cinema anf Music that ever blessed our eyes and ears the work of independent artists who produced on a shoestring; and, who were brutally pillaged by the Corporate Copyright establishment?

          So, what happens when high quality Art becomes produced and digitally distributed instantaneously from anyone on the planet to everyone on the planet using P2P technology at low cost without the monopoly protecting surcharges and obstructions of the existing poilitically protected channels?

          Answer: Look in the diccionary under “irrelevant”.

        • SoundnuoS

          @DouglasAdams

          No, but it could stop them from bothering to refine it very much since they won’t be getting anything for their trouble.

          Maybe you’ll still get a lot of stuff, but it will be exactly like the videos people make themselves and put up on Youtube.

        • Guest

          @SoundnuoS

          Wrong. You really don’t believe people will want to create and make it the best they can for themselves and not for money? You think groups of people won’t want to start film projects because they have an interest in that field? Granted, they might not reach the same quality in all aspects but it’s still inevitable. It’s human nature for a lot of people. Those that might need the extra little cash could look to sponsorship or be commissioned to make something. I think some forget what it was like before money ruled the arts.

        • SoundnuoS

          @Guest

          I think there are some who will try to do it, but given their lack of resources they will be forced to give up.

          I also think there will be a lot fewer people who will bother in the first place.

          In other words I do think the supply of high quality culture will be lower without copyright, just like I think the amount of technical innovation will be lower without patent law.

          I guess I don’t have the same amount of unrealistic idealism about this everyone in here seems to have.

        • Guest

          @SoundnuoS

          That’s kind of sad. There are plenty of people that love creating art and will do so regardless of how much they have to finance it. Yes, there is an ocean of content you’d rather not waste your time with, but with user ratings and moderation, it becomes easier to sort through it. And don’t delude yourself, barely any of the Hollywood content that makes it to cinemas is any better. High production value != good content.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Hertzfeldt has been making his animations for years and has complete control over his work, from production to distribution, and has won a ton of awards for his work. Students of animation and film also produce some amazing work with next to no funding.

          As for music, well, how could you possibly miss it? Youtube, The Promo Bay, the internet? It’s all over the place. The software to produce high quality music without being a sound engineer has become ubiquitous. A ton of people readily just give it away on the internet for free.

          And games? Games too. There is so much content coming out under the “indie games” category. Kongregate and Newgrounds have so much great content spewing out of them it’s crazy.

          Software? How could you even ask? Linux/GNU. ‘Nuff said.

          Copyright really is not necessary.

        • Scary_Devil_Monastery

          Yet one more who claims Mozart, Beethoven and Bach did not exist. That human culture was at a standstill instead of being 99% produced without copyright.

          And that the open-source sector does not exist – instead of, as it actually is, being the most seething hive of innovation and creativity currently in existence.

          @SoundnuoS

          “Maybe you’ll still get a lot of stuff, but it will be exactly like the videos people make themselves and put up on Youtube.”

          OH, yes…that’s why Linux is a bad best-effort, and why openoffice and Gimp are rough hacks not worthy of mentioning.

          And did we forget Android?

          No, SoundnuoS. If you claim there will be no polish on the things being made then you are pulling a semantic shell game on a very fat bag of manifest untruth.

        • SoundnuoS

          @Guest & Scary_Devil_Monastery

          Wall of text coming up.

          Yes, people love to create and make it the best they can. There is a joy in that.
          What worries me is how they will be able to push their art to the limits without having the financial resources to devote their time to art.

          Mozart, Beethoven and Bach didn’t have sidejobs. They were full time musicians and didn’t have to spend their evenings pushing ale at the local inn to pay the bills.

          Basic rock will always be made, but how will the guy who needs two years to write his dubstep death-metal symphony with hundred man gamelan orchestra (silly example, but you get my point) find the time and energy between working the late shift at McD?

          How will the large, ambitious and expensive projects get done once every musician is a part timer and no one has a hope of recouping the investment made in them?

          The same goes for movies. The more ambitious projects will need financing. Who will put up the money if they have no hope of recouping their investment?

          And all props to open source but a lot of the time it’s about offering stuff that is as good as what’s available commercially.
          Open Office vs. Microsoft Office, Linux vs Unix etc. Often the innovations are made by people working commercially and then open source plays catch up.

          I’m sure you’ll be able to correct me on that as I freely admit I haven’t been following it that much.

          The problem with everyone focusing on open source is that this is still stuff that can be made at home with one guy and his computer.

          What about the expensive stuff that needs labs, materials and untold millions of investments?
          If patent law gets thrown aside and the chances to recoup your investment gets smaller, who will risk making the tech that replaces mobil phones?
          Who will risk the cost of innovation in any field?

          And what about education? I’m a big fan of having fair use clauses for educational use, but if every bit of educational material is considered freely downloadable who will risk making new material when that investment can’t be recouped? What will that mean for the future and quality of education in general?

          Film and music schools? How do you motivate keeping them going when the already slim chances of anyone having a career in those fields gets even smaller due to the abolishment of copyright?
          Who will be suicidal enough to apply to them and how will the faculty be professional enough once a few generations of practioners have been hobbyists?

          There’s a load of implications and consequences that everyone screaming for the abolition of copyright hopes will just magically fix itself.

          Who will see to that? The internet fairy?

        • Lawnstone

          @SoundnuoS

          Your concerns have a lot to do with capitalism. What we currently have with copyright and the capitalism of today is a system where only the rich are able to fund those large projects. The only projects that will be funded are the ones that will make the most profit. The investors aren’t concerned with quality or what people need. If quality and necessity happen to align with profit, then okay, but that often isn’t the case.

          A great example here is the game development industry. Too many times have I read stories of a developer on a large project having these great ideas for a game and then the publishers walk in, see it isn’t status quo, says it’s not in their predicted profit margins and the developer now gets to make another generic, repackaged game we’ve seen so many times before.

          In the case of these large projects we have new avenues of approach in crowd funding from Kickstarter and the like. Peter Molyneux has started 22cans, a 22 member development team, all funded through Kickstarter. Tim Schafer has also taken Double Fine down the crowd funding path. All in a bid to get away from these money men and make art for art, and not these money men.

          As for open source. It comes from both areas. I’d say the hobbyists have the majority of the arena there, but you’d have to check some statistics for it. Regardless though, as the code is still released under the GPL. They can’t recoup the resources they invested in it from selling it. It’s open source. They provide other services like support. Have a look at Oracle and MySQL and Java. It gets messy though.

          Oh. I read that wrong. Well. In that case. No. The majority of the internet is built on Linux. Linux routers, servers, switches, etc. Open source is definitely not playing catch up. Even down to the protocols we use to communicate are open source. The IETF and all of the RFCs are just sitting there. In the security sector, look for OpenBSD. OpenBSD is the go to OS for secure hosting. And that’s the community that wrote OpenSSH. Nearly everything to do with secure communication uses OpenSSH.

          Even universities are offering their course material for free now. Stanford, Harvard, MIT, etc. And then there’s the Khan Academy that is specifically online and for free. Accessible to anyone with an internet connection. University and even a good education only used to be available to those who could afford it. The level of entry is much lower now. Anyone who wants to learn can learn. Anyone who wants to pay for the extra guidance a lecturer provides can, but it won’t be a requirement. What it will mean is a better educated society who will then publish their own research into the pool of knowledge at our fingertips.

          There’s a load of changes computing and the internet is bringing. It has changed a lot already and is continuing to do so. And as always we’ll continue to adapt and find solutions to whatever improvements and problems these changing technologies make to our lives. Look at 3D printing. That’s the new frontier.

        • SoundnuoS

          @Lawnstone

          This is fine, but you’re still very software oriented. This is stuff that can be done with a few guys and some computers. It’s not replacement tech for mobile phones, or new medicines or new and improved fertilisers or anything in that vein.

          It also doesn’t solve the problems facing the cultural sector. The explosion we’ve had in popular culture in the postwar era is imo due in huge part to the fact that it has been sellable.

          Everyone likes to feel superior about Hollywood, but the box office doesn’t lie. The public is getting exactly what they want.
          Weirder and more marginal movies have nowhere near the numbers something like the latest James Bond has.

          The same goes for music. The most commercialized artists are (generally) the biggest sellers. Once again the public gets exactly what they want.

          The more unusual stuff still used to get made however (and sometimes still does) in both movies and music because someone thought it was worth the risk. There was a possibility it could sell enough to be at least somewhat profitable, and even if not, the big sellers had pulled in enough to justify the risk.

          The focus on safer bets we’ve seen in the last decade especially in the music business (more covers on records, Idols etc) is imo because of the problem piracy has caused. There’s no longer the extra money to spend on riskier ventures.

          Kickstarter type indie publishing of the unusual stuff should be a good idea, right?

          There’s a few reasons I don’t really trust this to work out.

          The fact that the public seems to be getting exactly what they want is one of them. How do you sell the more unusual stuff if it still needs a budget of 50 mil and most people want the stuff with the big explosions?

          Imo, people funding Kickstarter projects think exactly like the publishers. “What’s in it for me?”
          You need to have a name and/or throw a very good pitch in order to get funding.
          That dubstep death-metal gamelan symphony could have been the greatest thing ever, but since everyone thinks “Why the hell would I want something like that?” it will never get made.

          Often people don’t know that they would want something before it’s already made. This goes especially for cultural products imo.
          Relying on kickstarter projects for funding could easily lead to greater homogenisation of culture than what were seeing today.

          Since most people probably won’t fund very many kickstarter projects at the same time, the competition between projects will also be intense and likely to lead to a large number of good projects never getting enough money.

          Another reason is that kickstarter projects can be illegal in various places. In Finland some have been tried, but they don’t qualify as legal fundraising, and this leads into why I don’t really like kickstarter from a consumer pov.

          The first reason is that it has a great potential for fraud. Throw a brilliant pitch, raise a million bucks, move to the Bahamas.

          The second reason is that the temptation for the producer to save as much as possible in order to have some money for himself will be greater than in a project where the producer has to polish it in order to sell it.
          This could lead to the situation where the consumer does get the product, but it’s crap since so many corners were cut.

          I said this in another thread, but the sale of records, movies and books is a remarkably democratic way of selling art.
          It spreads the cost out among everyone buying. Something very popular will automatically be of higher value than something less popular, with more people buying.

          It is crowd funding after the fact, with the publisher assuming all the risks.

    • Guest321

      It’s not Bittorrent’s fault that Big Content refuses to use the protocol to their advantage by upgrading their business model. If they still think people are inclined to drive to the media stores and buy BluRay discs in this day and age, they deserve to go bankrupt and die. They clearly don’t give a shit about what the customers want.

      While we are it, may I remind you are that digital copies of games are still being sold for $60, same price as retail physical discs? As long as BS like that continues, anyone with two brain cells can see its all about greed. So yes, I will keep sharing to help out my fellow friends all around the world who clearly are nowhere as rich as the fat cats that run these industries and getting fatter everyday.

      • SoundnuoS

        @Guest321

        Anyone with one brain cell can see that piracy is all about greed.

        • Anyone

          you have that backwards

          sharing culture is not greedy
          trying to restrict that sharing for monetary gain is greedy

        • SoundnuoS

          @ Anyone

          We all have problems identifying our own greed I guess. It always feels justified.
          Doing everything possible to avoid paying 99 cents for a song and claiming that to be a basic human right does seem a bit Scrooge like to me though.

          The funny thing is that there are actually areas within patent law that have potential issues (hint: copyrighted art isn’t really one of them) but no one seems to talk about them here, so any claims of a “noble purpose” are very hard to take seriously.

        • http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole

          @SoundnuoS

          patent law is not related to copyright law. Quit trying to obfuscate the issue.

        • Anyone

          how is making my own copy to save money greedy?
          it might be frugal, but there’s nothing wrong with that

        • xpmule

          I’ve been uploading and downloading and giving away software and coding applications and releasing them on the net 101% free of charge for about a decade. Your statement is a ridiculous fantasy concocted in polluted delusional mind. I would suggest you spend more effort on “making up” better lies to serve your copyright troll brigade.. as it is your doing your fellow Trolls a disservice by pumping such inane drivel on the net. I’m sure they oh so terribly proud of the verbal diarrhea you spew on the comment section.
          By the I’ve never ever met 1 person that has charged a cent for any file sharing activities or the files involved and i can safely say that the vast large majority of us upload and download with out asking for money from anyone.

          Get a grasp on reality and maybe I won’t have to make a fool out of you and your senseless and mentally ill “facts” ;)

        • Scary_Devil_Monastery

          Not really, no.

          Sharing information is actually a biological imperative and may be more hardcoded into us than ambition or greed. Unlike the latter two it has a few hundred thousand years of being a survival mechanism for the tribe under it’s belt.

          And this is why several millennia of trying to control information has always failed at the end. Care to tell me why even in the days of napster, uploading was extremely popular?

          And why there was any content to find at all on Limewire and Kazaa? Why hacked torrent clients faking upload ratios never became popular?

          Filesharing isn’t about greed but the opposite. Of course, denying that easily checked fact is a staple of industry mouthpieces.

        • SoundnuoS

          Ok, I’ll rephrase. Downloading 25000 (substitute large number of your choice) files of various copyrighted songs, movies, books and software and claiming you have a right to do that without paying is somewhere very close to greediness imo.

    • Guest

      >This is going to get shutdown real quick, it basically screams “I’m going to >Pirate DVDs and Blurays and watch it on my 50 inch HDTV”

      You DO know that there’s LOTS of legitimate content (both music, series and movies) to download on BitTorrent, right?

      No, it’s not going to be “shutdown real quick”, because there is NOTHING inherently illegal/criminal/wrong about using BitTorrent, the same way there is NOTHING inherently illegal/criminal/wrong about using FTP, HTTP or any other data transmission protocol.

      >And I’m not even against piracy.

      Right. If that’s your view of the subject and you’re not even against piracy, I can only imagine how it would be if you WERE against piracy…

      • Guest321

        Copyright trolls seem to easily forget that on PromoBay thousands of independent artists are willingly sharing their music for free through Bittorrent protocol.

        • Rohe

          “Lets buy a $4000 FullHD 3D Screen with glasses and 7.1 Surround system to watch TONS of Full HD 3D stuff made by some underground people for free”

          There might are people who believe that this “thinking” exists, but I doubt that thinking is believable by anybody. At least who is honest about spending $4000.

          Most people would ask for link to Torrents or anything, and then we end up on the some hand full of ((very)bad) Fanfilms, some 1000s FullHD Youtube clips and less-than-interesting niche documentaries. And 3d stuff? Seriously! ;^)

          Lets say that there is the possibility that we give certain buyers of this box the “benefit of the doubt”. Statistically. Not morally.

        • Guest

          And you seem to forget that’s their choice to do that and there are artists who choose not to do that.

    • PuaHate

      Looks like someone is on their period this week.

    • Guest32

      “This is going to get shutdown real quick, it basically screams “I’m going to Pirate DVDs and Blurays and watch it on my 50 inch HDTV”…And I’m not even
      against piracy, but it’s ideas like these that are making BitTorrent more guilty.”

      Bittorrent is a neutral protocol, and the law does not outlaw offering torrent capable hardware or software.
      The developer and the seller does not commit anything illegal, unless their marketing induces copyright infringement.

      I am sure the marketing does not encourage people to use the hardware in an illegal way. Stating that the product can stream video is not even close to inducement under even the most permissive standard, because video streaming and file sharing have legitimate dual uses.

    • Karak R. Jack

      How can bittorrent be “guilty”? It’s just an inanimate thing. It can be no more guilty than a lawn mower or rubber duck can. I don’t think there is a single country anywhere in the world that has outlawed bittorrent either, a requirement for it to ever be “guilty” of anything.

      And if we do start outlawing devices like this one, then we’re going to have to outlaw all PC’s, including tablets and phones, as well as game consoles, the latest televisions and bluray players, and pretty much anything else that can run an app (which is quickly becoming anything with a processor).

      • xpmule

        replace the word bittorent with file locker service..

    • MadAsASnake

      The same way VCR’s were shutdown? CD-R’s and DVD-R’s, Cassette tapes, Walkmans, iPods, Phones that play music, personal computers, tablets, and so on? BitTorrent is not illegal, and there are plenty of non-infringing and fair use uses.

    • Scary_Devil_Monastery

      Like the PC and the old model Xbox?

  • Sfoxman

    I do NOT agree that file share is P I R A C Y. I understand that if someone buy a film and copy it and distribute it to the rest of the people in the world just to download it, it will be impossible to the entertainment industry “to exist”. What can be done? I think, I am absolute unable to understand what is happening, what to do! P I R A C Y has nothing with file share, but, file share can bankrupt with the entertainment industry?! What to do to keep on with literature, music, movies, series and all kinds of culture that can be distributed via digital? If nobody believes it is possible through ads or in the case of music and literature, for free. What to do? It is “the end” of the C U L T U R E like we know?! Humanity need to share for to grow.

    • Guest

      Given the absolute refusal of the entertainment industry to adapt to the modern age, their blatant hatred of any communications medium that they do not have full control over, their fetish for extrajudicial methods, and their complete lack of regard or remorse for extreme collateral damage, I can only view the collapse of the media industry as we now know it to be a net positive.

      But that would not be the end of culture. Culture existed long before copyright did, and it will exist long after the abomination that copyright has become lies dead and forgotten in the tar pits of history. You should be more concerned about what would happen if the entertainment industry wins the present battle. At that point, you will see a world of such draconian, fascist copyright law that any works that are produced will be so quickly, so tightly, so thoroughly, and so permanently locked away behind a corporate vault that they will be forgotten by civilization within a decade. Do not ask about independently published works, because they will not be permitted. Historians of a future era–if such a profession is still allowed and feasible–will note that the 21st century marked the beginning of a new dark age in which the dissemination of knowledge and culture was restricted to a degree not seen since before the invention of the Gutenberg press. Information preservation from this dark age will be minimal–most of society’s works will vanish from public view completely once a marketing department decides that the works are no longer fashionable in the present zeitgeist, then those works will eventually become orphan works that no man may legally access. Any extant copies recovered from this time period will probably be so crippled with DRM and undocumented proprietary formats that archivists may never be able to view them with modern (or even contemporary) equipment, anyway. If you don’t think such a scenario is possible, just ask yourself how many works have entered the public domain in the last couple of decades.

      You said it yourself. Humanity needs to share in order to grow. We share knowledge with each other to become smarter and more capable individuals. We share culture with each other in order to become more understanding and enlightened individuals. But greed is the opposite of sharing. Copyright was originally intended as a contract between the publisher and society. The publisher was granted a reasonable period of time (certainly less than his entire lifetime) to have exclusive rights (i.e. rights removed from society) over his work. In return, once that period expired, the work became public domain for the benefit of all society. But copyright maximalists broke that contract decades ago with ever lengthening copyright terms and ever expanding restrictions. If people that call for the reform and/or abolishment of current copyright law win, then all men will have the right to stand on the shoulders of giants. If the copyright maximalists and the entertainment industry win, then very few will have the right to stand on the shoulders of giants–and there will be no more giants.

      • SoundnuoS

        So, this is a bit like religion for you guys?

        Unless the Messiah (copyright abolishment) arrives, the world is headed straight for hell?

        • Anyone

          unlike religion we have facts on our side ;)

        • SoundnuoS

          Claims many, facts seem to be few.

        • http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole

          I guess you’ve never heard of Kopimism.

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopimism

          All hail CTRL-C/CTRL-V!!

        • http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole

          1 Corinthians 13:2 – “Having all the knowledge in the world is useless, without the desire for charity” (sharing).
          Philippians 1:9 – “And this I pray, that your charity may more and more abound in knowledge, and in all understanding”
          Hosea 4:6 – Obstruction of the flow of knowledge could be the destruction of mankind.
          Vidya Daan(विद्या दान) translated as Knowledge Charity, a concept in Daan, is a tenet of all Dharmic religions that also values the sharing of Knowledge
          Gyan yoga, Jnana yoga(ज्ञान योग) translated as Wisdom Exercise or Knowledge Path, is the sacred search for True Knowledge, in all Dharmic religions
          In Hinduism, Right Knowledge is a form of God, and anything Knowledge is written or recorded on is considered sacred, to be protected from obscurity: अपूर्व: कोपि कोशोयं विद्यते तव भारति |
          व्ययतो वॄद्धिम् आयाति क्षयम् आयाति संचयात् ||
          (Oh Goddess Saraswati, your treasure of knowledge (Vidya) is indeed very amazing! If used(shared) it grows and if unused(obscured) it shrinks!)
          In Islam, the prophet Muhammad said: “Wisdom is the lost property of the faithful; wherever he finds it he has the right to take it”
          Prophet Mohammed also said: “Whoever is asked about a knowledge that he knows about and then hides it and keeps it away, he will be bridled on the day of judgement with a bridle of fire.

          So, yeah…there’s that.

        • xpmule

          no its called enjoying freedom and our rights as a human that people like you are stealing from us..
          don’t dilute the issue with off topic irrelevant crap.

          you keep victimizing us and you will be sorry !

        • guess who

          a case in point is america. the education system is so shite that americans are intentionaly kept ignorant and stupid, because the knowlege to empower them to be fully funtional, self sufficitent and a thinking people isn’t there, knowlege is power and a weapon and they do now want a knowlegable population, they are not easy to control, manipulate and coerce and will not believe the lies deliverd to them en mass on a daily basis. americans are kept dum and dumbed down so they believe the lies they are fed by american media and government. do you think the shite that america is pulling right now would fly if america was an educated country?

          america is a facist state, in action and its global aims. this is irefutable. to believe otherwize, you are no better than one of the american cows beomg herded by thier overlords.

        • Scary_Devil_Monastery

          No, not really. Just that the world with copyright pertaining to noncommercial sharing in it is already so unbearable that people have, én másse, wrestled free of it even before the ink was even dry on Queen Mary I’s first draft of “Copyright”.

          For some it may indeed be a religion – see the kopimists.

          For others it’s the realization that either copyright as it stands now must be kneecapped and hobbled or everyone’s right to free speech and communication will. As collateral damage, no less.

          There’s no one who cares politically who is in it for downloading copies of “Avatar”, that’s for certain.

    • xpmule

      new Troll angle ?

      are they gonna start masquerading as file sharers making guilty comments ?

      • Scary_Devil_Monastery

        “new Troll angle ?

        are they gonna start masquerading as file sharers making guilty comments ?

        Start?

        What do you mean “start”, Kimosabe? The tactic of pretending to be “one of you” is as old as written speech.

        1) Establish credibility.
        2) Undermine cause.
        3) Profit.

        The problem the trolls keep running into is that this tactic only works where the difference is one of opinion only. Meaning it only goes to step 1 before the filesharing crowd stops it dead.

        Take a look at astroturfing 101. This is a basic tactic. Or as one of the “Speedboat veterans” had it; “I used to be a Kerry hardliner, but then…”.

  • ThumbsUpThumbsDown

    You can bet that Government has forgotten its true purpose when it stands four square against publicly acclaimed innovation.

    The protectors of the Past tell the Future that it can’t come in.

    Guess what?

    The Future’s coming anyway.

    • Hogspace

      I fucking LOVE this box. Talk about disruptive technology.
      The big media companies better amend their ways and get onto some sort of secure torrentz platform before they go the way of the Brontosaurus.

      • Rohe

        We have 20+ major services who could stream stuff if the HAVE the stuff. But they don’t. Netflix is booted out, Amazon is booted out, even the cable services are booted out. Innovation requires content and content has to be produces so the conveyor belt can deliver it.

        Its nothing disruptive to add another conveyor belt. Disruptive would be, if they create requested content that is available globally to everybody for a low price.
        That would be “disruptive”, like Netflix “House of Cards” series.

        • MadAsASnake

          And the question to ask is why do they not?

        • Rohe

          Because “creativity” financing is like making “fire with money bills”. 90% fail.
          The 8% of the crop make it even. And 2% make all the money of the world.
          Things like Avatar or Skyfall are even in the 0.1% They know the process.

          The masses don’t. Its not everybody’s “game” or “knowledge” to drop some millions on something that even doesn’t have any way to sell (since we are in complete new land of non studio financing).

          Without a billionaire who has no problems to produce 20 series with 2 good and 18 crap we might get somewhere. But with the current affairs of things I rather believe in that 20 mil Kickstarter by McG to produce something fresh than anybody who is really capable coming out of the woodwork and tries.

          Its just not reasonable to eye for the 2% when you know that hitting the 98% is probably more likely. Disney wasted 220mil on “John Carter of Mars”. This will take 20 years to get even.

      • http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole

        Seriously, it’s about fucking time someone came up with a device like this with coax output that they can mass produce. I know you can make it yourself, but things like this are how we spread piracy to the mainstream instead of just limiting it to the techno-elite.

        • Hogspace

          Why co-ax?

  • Andrew me

    We need more and more of these boxes, and we need the big boys to start understanding this is the future, the way things are going and there is no turning back to the old business models. Once the likes of Sony and LG and Sharp start manufacturing these boxes we should have a court case very quickly which would once and for all allow torrenting for personal use.

    If we can get that sorted then the media companies will have no option but to start moving forward and developing systems that are based on supplying the content free, with add support or subscription supported business models. The longer they leave this the harder it is going to become for them, and the more they are going to lose the opportunity to control some of the distribution at least.

    And anyone who thinks this is going to force Hollywood to close down…. they managed to make movies and build there business before dvd and vhs and they were very happy with the money they were making, technology is just taking some of the profits it gave from that home technology away from them, they could have kept making billions but greed got in there way.

    • Akzad

      Only to see their ads removed and the subscription model bypassed by the same people who copy now. The argument is valid, but tech will not change the DNA of humans or the thing they are used to. First it was DRM, then the format, now its the price. Tomorrow its something else.

      Practically all youth around me have their iPhones jailbreaked and download 100s apps and games for free. And they only cost 99c! Even the Free2Play games who run on remote servers are hacked, so you can play the game for free by wasting some _elses_ expensive server resources for free.

      I’m not judging in any way, I just reporting how it is.

      The only way “the system” still works because nobody is selling this box in your tech-store with a big sticker saying “Never pay anything for your media in your life”.

      As long people think its somehow “fishy” the amount of people doing it will remain relatively small in the overall picture. But if its truly legal to put up “moviesforfree-torrents.com”, then see how the picture will change dramatically.

      • Guest

        If no one is buying candles anymore, perhaps the candle makers should sell light bulbs rather than bribe legislators to pass laws forcing people to stay in the dark.

        • Rohe

          Why should they? It sells as long anonymous “distribution” is outlawed. In record numbers. And in War and Love everything is allowed, even “political massaging”. This is War. Especially for the US-Media Machine.

          I rather believe in a change by people who simply produce stuff *for* independent systems than some dispossessing by law. As soon Avatar 2,3,4 isn’t “protected” anymore we will see some blue painted guys running around on a parking lot. Thats what you get for the 1cent per person.

          Look through the “Kindle Books: Free”-Store at Amazon. People down vote lots of crap constantly. If there would be so much quality there, then there would be no “Kinde Book: Pay”-List. It seems that there is still a big difference in quality, like spelling or sentence construction. If its free, people don’t care. “Just eat it.”

      • Scary_Devil_Monastery

        See, the problem here is that the iPhone started out trying to be restrictive. The main reason people invented the jailbreak was because Apple refused to load the flash player on it.

        Enter the jailbreak hacks. Now that you’ve already gone 90% of the way, just enable all the games and apps Apple pulled from the app store.

        And now it’s literally no effort at all to add the hacked apps as well – hell, Apple’s knee-jerk reflex to jailbreaking was to ban rooted phones from accessing the market wasn’t it? So for a long time if you had an iPhone with root, you HAD to get the hacked apps.

        With the PS3? same thing. No one bothered hacking it until Sony delivered an on-the-sly firmware update which removed the otherOS functionality for which a number of geeks and hackers actually bought it.

        Now here’s a hint. Try selling a car which you artificially restrict to where it can only run at 50 mph but guzzles ten times as much gas as it actually needs. I guarantee you a new industry will be invented overnight, selling tuning kits.

        “As long people think its somehow “fishy” the amount of people doing it will remain relatively small in the overall picture. But if its truly legal to put up “moviesforfree-torrents.com”, then see how the picture will change dramatically.”

        Bullshit. You mean canonical makes a successful living off Ubuntu and conjures the salaries for their workers out of thin air?

        Or did you mean how today bloggers can live successfully out of writing on free-to-read webpages?

        Or was it how every available online newspaper is all costs and no gain?

  • Jatillpirater

    Looks interesting.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Ender-Wiggin/100000885624281 Ender Wiggin

    well that seems too little too late. i can stream to my roku boxes with plex, and a refurb’d roku only costs 50 bucks, plus it has way more applications.

  • syloker

    seems to me a device to catch pepps more easy!!
    lack of security in privacy features goes to leave pepps exposed to anti-p2p!!!

  • Dezzalnutz

    Give me a Netflix of live tv and up to the min. movies and I will stop torrenting stuff.

  • Pedro Marques

    But you can stream incomplete files on uTorrent, howcome this feature isn’t present?

  • Evropi

    To the other people above; okay, yes, I do pirate. Fair play.

    But I also try out other Linux distributions (currently on Netrunner, won’t change in a while probably! Great OS), usually downloading them through BitTorrent for greater speed.

    As far as I’m aware, no BitTorrent *clients* have been shut down yet. If they were to be though, it would be really damn scummy and a step backwards in technology.

    In the 1990s, before media saw that monetising P2P content was difficult, P2P and decentralised technologies were seen as the future. The World Wide Web is decentralised by default. What happened to those utopian ideals? We have ‘walled gardens’ even in software now thanks to the likes of Apple and now even Microsoft (the original open platform, now turned closed with W8).

    • Rohe

      In many countries in Europe, notable England and France, but also Germany, the problem isn’t the client, its the uploading part. Which is constantly
      considered as semi-professional if done long and to many different IPs, which means that the provision to protect a “private constomer” regularly doesn’t help and then they embezzle insane amount of money out of you.

      Especially porn producers, who got hit hard by the free porn streaming sites found out that this racket works quite well. A company in England recently got the greenlight of the judges to send $1500 pay-or-else letters to 10.000s households.

      For actual stuff, the usage of Torrent is toxic. Not the client itself.

      • Evropi

        I am well aware of that. I was pointing out it is not the clients at fault to all the people saying ‘this will get sued out of existence’ and other such silly things.

      • Guest321

        Speaks volumes about the judges if anything. Judges giving the green light to extortion, what kind of justice can we expect from this justice system?

      • MadAsASnake

        Uploading is part of sharing. Sharing is not commercial infringement. The only reason this is “considered” by anyone to be commercial is because the courts made it pretty clear that that it was not (thunderingly obvious). Some cleverdick lawyer tried this on. Just wait till one of these case gets to the point where quantum is determined (if ever…) – you’ll find it is no more than one copy. Whether infringement is commercial or not depends on factors other than the technology used.

        GEIL will succeed in exactly the same way ACS did. Not at all. Sure some will pay, but most won’t. The UK is much better prepared this time. The real shame is that the vast majority accused will not have done it.

    • http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole

      Well, the public will speak. What I’d like to see is nobody upgrade from W7 and 8 just flop. Maybe they’ll learn that closed systems are a bad idea and change it with 9.

      Although this is a pipe dream, because every Dell or HP that rolls out from now on will have Windows 8 pre-installed on it, and the masses will adapt it. But maybe some Linux flavour will emerge that’s close enough to Windows and user friendly enough (maybe a preinstalled tutorial?) to ease one into Linux that there can be a proper Diaspora from Microsoft.

      Dare to dream anyway.

  • http://twitter.com/MidoThePirate Ahmed Omar

    Great Progress As usual …Go BitTorrent Go :)

    • ScrewEwe2

      When you read the lead in paragraph it say’s: “The new set-top box supports playback of all popular video formats and can also download torrents by itself, fully anonymously if needed.”, and at the end of the article states: “This includes various VPN applications for those who value their privacy.”

      When µTorrent builds in complete encryption & anonymity so the seeds and peers can’t be seen, without the need for proxies or VPN’s, I’ll congratulate them for progress..

      • Scary_Devil_Monastery

        Well, proofs of concept exist already. RShare/Stealthnet for one.

        However, so far you do take a speed hit. And will until those clients become majority. After that no more problem.

  • Another Guest

    Why do we need all these set-tops? Why not to connect your TV directly to your computer to enjoy torrent content and etc?

    • Another Guest

      HDMI or Wi-Fi connection for example, I mean.

    • Guest321

      Well of course computers can do everything. Computers can function as router/switch. Computers can function as NAS. Hell computers can even act as the damn TV itself if you attach a TV Tuner card. But still we have separate dedicated boxes for each of these things because of a variety of reasons. Some may say convenience. Some may say portability. Others may say power consumption factor. I know the last one is particularly important to me. That’s why the Raspberry Pi is a godsend for me.

      • xpmule

        not me i ditched all that crap and use my computer and my 1080p pc screen. currently i only have one machine running but i used to run a 2nd PC that ran nothing but WMC hooked up to a TV for downloaded TV/Movies and the occasional web browsing for the girlfriend while i was playing GTA or CSS or something. Ended up selling the machine and i am close to getting a 2nd machine going again but if i do it will end up sold.. people keep wanting my spare computers so i sell them. I use to use Mikrotik (dedicated home linux pc router)long ago for old PC’s with a rack mount switch for home networking (great for ultra old machines)
        I can’t see myself buying any of these extra things. Also with TVs now a days i would rather buy a really big computer monitor and use that instead of a TV too. I may not be able to get one as big but i think think quality vs price would be better. not sure why people bother with all these things ..including game consoles.

    • Anyone

      probably because the computer and the TV is not in the same room

      • xpmule

        lots can be done if your creative. I got all the cat5e cables from an internet cafe long ago and have some long cables lol
        I took one of them and cut of the ends and wired on some plugs for audio and video output from the gfx card straight to my stereo and TV.. worked great. I also grabbed one and cut 2 wires and rearranged them and made a cable to connect 2 pc’s together (crossover cable) ..doing all that gave my insanely long wires to work with ! and the occasional small hole in drywall helps ;) Wire is wire so do whatever you want. I usually would rather have wired contacts then everything wifi based !

    • ScrewEwe2

      That’s what I’ve been doing for years. The computer hooked up to my HDTV has four 1.5 terrabyte drives loaded with, … content.

    • http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole

      Mass marketability. To appeal to the lowest common denominator. The best way to change the law is to make every single person a criminal. And the best way to do that is to make the goal as easy, as accessible as possible, to lower the bar of entry so low that any trailer park trash can get it going.

      It’s the same old argument as to why we should be worried about more surveillance. Sure, most of us can probably encrypt our communication pretty easily, but it raises the bar for the rest of the world and makes privacy that much harder to attain. Just because we can avoid it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight it. And just because we can do without this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t embrace it and celebrate its existence, for the greater good.

      • Scary_Devil_Monastery

        +1

        The thought that human progress is driven by the exact point where technological capability intersects the lowest 5% on the gaussian IQ curve provides me a bounty of Picard facepalm moments.

  • Guest32

    @Rohe

    “Lets say that there is the possibility that we give certain buyers of this box the “benefit of the doubt”. Statistically. Not morally.”

    No, this is not how the law and society works. The hardware and software is neutral, and you can’t taint the technology by flipping the burden of proof.

    It’s not even necessary or fruitful to accept your premise that the technology and user is suspect until he can prove that there is no infringement.
    It’s the copyright maximalists burden to prove that the technology and the implementation of said technology lacks substantial noninfringing use.

    Even assuming that some or most uses of bittorrent and file sharing are transactions of copyrighted material, it’s not proof that it’s illegal.

    Fair use, transformative use,backup and copying within the household is often legally protected statutory exemptions to copyright law.

    • Rohe

      I rather believe that someone who is buying a car with 300mp/h max will try to drive that than believing that he bought this gas guzzler for “environmental reasons”. Superficial construction of arguments are for lawyers and politics. We “regular humans” should not play that game, because it makes us equally blamable.

      We can only change things, like getting “rid of copyright”, if it hurts. With all consequences, with all the necessary changes, blood, sweat and pain.

      Without “special advertising” this box will be like hundreds of other boxes, NAS systems and whatever. My NAS has a torrent client from the first firmware update. Its the first “tab” of five after the basic setup. What should I make of that? It took two small firmware updates to get rid of the function all together.

      It seemed, that the NAS producer was very surprised that some of his “customers” don’t want to use that function and were not amused to get it “into your face”.

      How society “works” is defined by the masses, not by single persons. If the masses elect corrupt parties who against their own interest, its their prerogative to do so. Even when its stupid.

      • http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole

        “We can only change things, like getting “rid of copyright”, if it hurts. With all consequences, with all the necessary changes, blood, sweat and pain.”

        totally disagree. I feel the only way it can change is if you make every average joe a criminal, then they’ll have to repeal it to match social standards. The law doesn’t exist independently from the rest of the world, it’s constantly changing and shifting based on pressures from our society. That’s how a kid making offensive comments about missing children on Twitter ended up being arrested, because the masses determine what is legal, illegal; acceptable and unacceptable.

        When there are thousands outside of your favourite elected official’s house rallying because the law is making them all criminals for everyday activity, the law will be changed quickly. When people ignore what the law is and carry on about their business despite the punishments for prohibition, prohibition gets repealed. I don’t think it really gets fixed any other way than through mass consensus.

        • SoundnuoS

          Prohibition is another really bad analogy.

          In the case of prohibition a product that was wanted by the public was made illegal.

          In this case the product is easily and legally available for sale, it just gets taken for free anyway.

        • http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole

          I have a paper that says differently, right here

          https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2095193

        • Scary_Devil_Monastery

          @SoundnuoS

          “In this case the product is easily and legally available for sale, it just gets taken for free anyway.”

          You mean like water?

          Or are you referring to people trying to pass of copied media under an original brand?

        • SoundnuoS

          @Gene Poole

          No, prohibition is a bad analogy because of the reasons I listed. If the author of the paper doesn’t realise that then that’s one problem.

          The paper comes to the conclusion that the law on filesharing copyrighted material should be changed, because he claims that current societal norms demand it.

          I don’t agree with that conclusion, because as I’ve pointed out filesharing in the form of piracy is immoral because it demands that a group of people should work for free to produce nice stuff for others.

          Changing the law would make a situation that is both unfair and oppressive legal.

          In this case it doesn’t matter if the majority would feel differently.
          Oppression by the majority is still oppression.

          I also doubt that the majority of people feel that creators shouldn’t be compensated for their work, so changing the law isn’t justified from that point either.

          The only thing that has changed is that people seem to have a hard time seeing the connections and the consequences of their actions.

          Societal norms used to think slavery was acceptable and that people with a certain skin color should sit at the back of the bus.
          If societal norms changed on that, would it be more justifiable to change the law or to change the societal norms?

          Creators having protection for their work is the new and improved situation. Going backwards is not an improvement.

        • http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole

          It’s going to take me a bit to call you on all your bullshit here, so just bear with me.

          “filesharing in the form of piracy is immoral because it demands that a group of people should work for free to produce nice stuff for others.”

          First off, economics cannot by nature be moral. There is no morality involved in commerce, either morally or immorally. If it were at all, then it would be moral for a producer to try to get the highest profit for his product, just as it would be moral for a consumer to try to get said product for the lowest available price. Free is, of course, the lowest available price, so filesharing cannot be immoral, under any consideration of economics and commerce.

          Secondly, your premise is flawed, because nobody has ever made the demand of anyone working for free, nor has it had this effect in the real world. As study after study has shown (and I’m not going to link, you can do your own damn legwork), piracy does not harm the market, in fact studies have shown it is beneficial, as it can have a “try before you buy” effect and act as free advertising. So, your agreement or disagreement with that conclusion is null, void, and moot, because not only are you wrong, but your arguments are completely nonsensical.

          “Changing the law would make a situation that is both unfair and oppressive legal.

          I’m sorry, are you seriously arguing that copyright is fair? That we should not be able to give away, reproduce, or share that which we have paid for with our own money? Are you suggesting that property rights are unfair? Because copyright is a limitation on existing property rights, and that’s all it is. So, no. Changing the law would restore fairness. You’re wrong again.

          “Oppression by the majority is still oppression.”

          I love that.

          http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/oppression
          oppression (countable and uncountable; plural oppressions)

          The exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner.

          Yet you are clearly arguing that the current state of oppression, the suppresion of the people’s rights to property is completely just and reasonable, because you would not advocate a changing of the law.

          “I also doubt that the majority of people feel that creators shouldn’t be compensated for their work, so changing the law isn’t justified from that point either.”

          Your doubt notwithstanding, nobody thinks creators should not be compensated for their work. But it is the responsibility of creators to find ways to sell their product, not to strongarm people into behaving in irrational ways just so that the creator can get paid. That’s not my responsibility, to ensure he gets paid. Let him get paid on his own, by competing in the free market. Evian managers to do it, after all, and people are stealing their product right out of their fucking faucets.

          “Societal norms used to think slavery was acceptable and that people with a certain skin color should sit at the back of the bus.
          If societal norms changed on that, would it be more justifiable to change the law or to change the societal norms?”

          Interestingly enough, we changed our societal norms and changed the law. Just as societal norms are becoming less and less tolerant of the restrictions on the flow of information in the information age. By your argument Rosa Parks should have been beaten with a rubber hose and thrown in jail for refusing to move. Way to nail your own coffin.

          from the inside.

          under 6 feet of dirt.

        • SoundnuoS

          @Gene Poole

          Actions have a moral dimension and that’s what we’re talking about here and not economical theories.
          Filesharing (as piracy) is an action that affects the person creating the art that is being shared and therefore it has a moral dimension.

          With your argument shoplifting has no moral dimension since that’s just the consumer trying to get stuff for the cheapest possible price, which is free.
          Most people think there is some kind of morality involved there, even to the degree that it’s been made a criminal offence.

          My premise is not flawed. If we extend the action of piracy to the whole population, which is what most people here seem to call for, then it creates a situation (if piracy has an effect on the market, more on that below) where the creators of the stuff that is being shared do have to work for free producing it.

          It is in fact your claim that study after study shows that piracy has no negative effect on the market that is bullshit.

          MOST available studies say that piracy negatively affects the market.
          Here’s another one:
          http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1990153&rec=1&srcabs=1989240&alg=1&pos=2

          Most people here seem to have somewhat of a brain, so I can’t understand how they suggest branding as some kind of solution to the problem with free downloading.
          Branding can work with physical products, but imagine this dialog: “Dude! Check out this file! It’s a genuine iTunes file!” —–”??? Yeah, whatever”

          With music it makes f*ck all of a difference what brand the file is.

          Copyright is fair, because it’s the only thing that protects the creator and no one HAS to buy.

          I’ve said this in a few posts already, but I’ll say it again.

          The small sum (9.99 or so) that you pay for an album isn’t even close to covering the cost of production. That means you get no property rights to the content for that price. They stay with the creator.

          The sale of records, movies and books is a remarkably democratic way of selling art. It spreads the cost out between everyone buying. Something popular will automatically be of higher value since more people are buying.

          It’s crowd funding after the fact, with the creator and publisher taking all the risks.

          The coffin is still open and above ground imo.

  • Anyone

    for $9 more you can get the Ouya which does all that and more

  • Gee

    Contrary to what others have said, even if the media conglomerates had super fast servers to access their media for free… I would still pirate my stuff, because I DO NOT believe in supporting douchebags.

    • Milkmaid

      What a douchbag…

      • Gee

        I can be a pretty big asshole as well.

        • chris_p_bacon(R.O.L.L)

          you could both try shaving your heads and putting them together, that would make you a complete asshole

    • Asashii

      but you watch douchebags stuff HUH, which means you support them.

      • Gee

        Not really, like if I only stole physical sony or samsung merchandise, would that mean I support them?

  • Jamesvca

    It is quite obvious that file sharing has created a massive industry worldwide, such as software development, and manufacturing of all types of media gadgets, that people would not buy without file sharing. Why would you need a 2T hard drive if all you did was take pictures of your dog. I am sure the economic loss by the media corps is just a drop in the bucket compared to the economic gain of the file sharing industry. They just don’t like it cause the money goes into someone else’s pocket.

    • SoundnuoS

      Pretty much this. And the people creating all the stuff that’s getting shared are kind of f*cked because this time they are getting ripped off again and they aren’t even getting a percentage deal.

      • http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole

        I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again…

        when the tides are shifting, you need to stop worrying about pirates and adjust your sales*

        or

        adapt or die, motherfucker.

        *totally ripped off from danbull.

      • xpmule

        no one is getting ripped off.. gimme a break

        if people don’t wanna buy a product they won’t.
        the fact that someone downloads something does not in any way translate into a lost sale.. if we used math like that to getto the moon we would have landed on the son.

        why do you bother ? don’t you feel embarrassed being constantly owned on this comment section here on TF ?

        • SoundnuoS

          I’ll just answer some of your points made in various post in this one.

          I can see that a lot of people posting here are involved with open source software in some way. I believe that’s what’s making them blind to the different conditions other creative industries operate under.

          You say you’ve been giving away software free for ten years. I’m assuming that means you’re not making a living as a self-employed software designer.
          I’m guessing (correct me if I’m wrong) that you feel the software you’ve given away has been good pr in getting you employed by someone else, doing software?

          I’m also guessing that whoever you work for is actually selling stuff in order to pay your salary?

          In the case of a musician this can’t happen. The product is the music and the music is the product. There’s no one else there to employ them if the product gets taken for free.

          For everything else I’ll just refer back to the debate monstrosities here:
          http://torrentfreak.com/music-biz-wants-to-block-pirate-bay-plus-260-additional-sites-130105/#disqus_thread
          (There’s another one I link to in there where “the lost sale” gets debated a bit more.)

          I think the only ones claiming to constantly “own me” on matters of fact and ethics are people who can’t bother to read or have a problem understanding what they read.

          This kind of reinforces my point about this being like religion: any fact and argument against piracy can be tossed away in order to keep the faith.

        • Scary_Devil_Monastery

          @SoundnuoS

          “I think the only ones claiming to constantly “own me” on matters of fact and ethics are people who can’t bother to read or have a problem understanding what they read.”

          Let me guess – those would be the people who did not arbitrarily rewrite human rights articles to suit their own needs?

          If so, they read right but you have a problem with comprehension.

          The alternative to non-commercial copying being allowed is the total abolition of privacy and right of communication. It’s that simple. Because you can not enforce copyright in the non-commercial regard without listening to what absolutely everyone communicates.

          Back in the 18th century and more recent still, people went to war and killed in order to maintain those rights. The pro-copyright crowd keeps forgetting this while they place acts such as SOPA, PIPA and ACTA on the table.

          As for the professional musician – well, let me put it bluntly, in the 90′s the first thing taught in media and communications was that single media was, for all intents and purposes, dead. Radio did indeed kill the video star.

          They were wrong, of course. Modern metallurgy did not kill off the blacksmith. But in order to survive that professions has had to expand the repertoíre quite a lot. There is no way any scientist today will survive only by being proficient in protein crystallography – as wanted a skill as that is. Unless he can be named among the top ten experts in that narrow field.

          I don’t think you will be able to live very successfully off of only being a professional musician any more than a scientist will get away with being only proficient in a highly specific field of study – unless you or he happen to be among the absolutely best around at what you do.

          And filesharing has nothing to do with this. The absolute glut of entertainment in all shapes and colors vying for attention 24/7 just might. Yesterdays music fan may today be stapled fast to his WoW guild screen. Or frantically finding new pics of kats to post captions on. Or trying to follow the latest five reality shows all dealing with the hardships of professional musicians. Et Ad Nauseam.

          Those are the timewasters competing for time and your wallet today.

        • SoundnuoS

          @Scary_Devil_Monastery

          Imo the bending of human rights articles is done by people who claim they justify piracy, since that opinion needs to ignore whole clauses in the articles.

          Anyway, you’re the guy who thinks the governmental stand on things in a given country is what determines if human rights have been breached or not, so I’m not taking your analysis of it very seriously.

          This once again points out the religious aspect of this thing, when the same old statements are being made again without any of the counter arguments being adressed.

          We already discussed (and I gave alternate viewpoints on) most of your points so please take it back to this thread where we left off:

          http://torrentfreak.com/new-report-accuses-google-and-yahoo-of-funding-pirate-sites-130103/#disqus_thread

    • http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole

      Sounds like you just argued that filesharing is creating jobs and encouraging innovation!

      Imagine that…almost sounds contrary to what we’ve been hearing.

      • SoundnuoS

        One new box containing no new technology =/= innovation.

        • http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole

          the fact that you’re opposed to it speaks volumes in and of itself.

        • SoundnuoS

          @ Gene Poole

          Show me the new tech.

  • James

    I am no Apple fan, believe me, but you can buy a newer Apple TV for less, and use AirParrot or a number of other apps to stream content from your computer to your TV. If you hack the ATV, you can do much more than this box does.

    • Anyone

      so what you are saying is that AppleTV takes more work to get it actually running
      and it costs $9 more
      and you are supporting a company that tries hard to be worse than Orwell’s worst predictions

      yeah, great deal

    • Guest321

      Fuck Apple. If something needs to be hacked to make it work as it should have out of the box, then its not worth buying.

  • Benjamin Eugene NElson

    My computer just plugs into my TV…

  • Rope

    I don’t get why this is news. My xbox, dvd player, and tv can already do this, as can boxes like the ones made by roku and popcorn hour.

  • Guest

    What a supreme waste of money this is. If I can find a way to acquire this box without paying for it then that will be the only way I’ll try one out. Maybe someone will start making clones of it and passing them out free of that ridiculous charge.

  • chris_p_bacon(R.O.L.L)

    is it just me or does privacy and piracy look similar? …..at a glance….why?

    • Yacama

      Because the only difference is aRrrrrrrrr … lol

    • SoundnuoS

      Need glasses?

    • Anyone

      because they are related

      if you want to enforce the copyright monopoly and eradicate piracy you also destroy all privacy

      • http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole

        This.

        it’s impossible to stop people from sharing content without monitoring everything they are doing. that’s a complete lack of privacy.

        I like the way you said it better, though.

  • kirk

    why doesn’t everyone just hook up their hdtv to their computer…why even use tv?

  • odin

    does it seed?

  • Guslinton

    Perhaps we should outlaw all devices that can transmit information, including paper envelopes.

  • xpmule

    Interesting. Also i wonder if the contact info brought up in the comments will be addressed ?

    i wonder how many would want one that do not know about file sharing like many of us nerds on the issue ?

  • guess who

    @Earth Star.

    hmm lets see, they have boats, we don’t. they sail on the high sea, we don’t, they steal tangible goods and kidnap people, we do not. how are we pirates and they are not the real deal?

    btw crack? really, that’s kind of a reach, pirates had rum, a diffrent drug, but a drug none the less.

    as for billy the kid, what the fuck are you talking about? he was a gunman, what the fuck has that to do with pirates and piracy? go away, you are an ignorant muppet.

  • Anon66

    Gen 1 WDTV with WDLXTV firmware has had torrent and newsgroup download support for years. Plays pretty much every format under the sun, even from .iso files. Neat for such a small fanless box.

    The android box is a nice option for those who don’t already have a NAS and media player though.

  • Rasse

    Android, you say. Then it should be able to load XBMC too.

  • Northern Night Light

    It says it uses Wi-Fi. Can you use to browse regular Web pages?

  • BTGuard - BitTorrent Anonymously

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